HIS-Press-Service, 1986 (9. évfolyam, 29. szám)
1986-02-01 / 29. szám
HIS Press Service No.29, February 1986 Page 4 Wars, which under the direction of priests merely provided the faithful with support for their spiritual welfare or offered aid and counsel for the prosperous work of the faithful within society, can be adduced as adequate models. The base groups represented in great numbers--in opposition to the South American ones--have likewise performed no official service in the pastoral ministry; they also could not have done so, since it has only been a few years since they have been granted an official justification of existence at all within the Church. In 1984 already, every seventh pastoral position in the country, 367 all together, was vacant. Every priest in active ministry had on the average already completed his sixtieth year. Replacement could thus come only from the ranks of the faithful. The regulations for ministry, uniform and binding for all future lay ministers, which the bishops will give them, are nothing further than legal provisions; they have little or no relation to praxis; and, above all, they cannot replace experience. It will depend on the judgment of the individual bishops, where and according to what considerations and criteria they will employ the lay ministers at their disposal. Next to the mitigation of the problems occasioned by the shortage of priests, the employment of lay ministers could promise success in yet another direction: the ecumenism between the Catholic and Protestant Churches, striven for since the Council but just barely present in Hungary in an initial stage, would perhaps finally receive an impetus. The Protestant Churches already have in the area of the lay apostolate a noteworthy tradition. Their experience cannot of course be directly transferred to the praxis of the Catholic Church, but the fact alone of the inclusion of the laity in the active ministry to their brothers in faith may contribute, taking the faithful of the different Churches as a point of departure, to awakening and deepening a mutual trust and thus to smooth the way for genuine ecumenical thought on the part of the Churches. B. The New Women's Religious Community for Social Service THE BACKGROUND As is well known, the State forbade in 1950 almost all religious orders to continue their activities. The argument was adduced that they supported the Church leadership in its resistance to the new social order and, moreover, were superfluous anyway since the duties hitherto discharged by them woukl from then on be taken over by the State. Only four teaching orders--the Benedictines, the Piarists, the Franciscans, and the School Sisters—were allowed to continue their activity within a limited framework, i.e., with two schools each and the number of religious
